The present invention relates to both information retrieval and cognitive science. It aims at presenting the users with pseudo-serendipitous and serendipitous information that prompts them for discovery in a wide number of fields, which include, but are not limited to, cross-selling in traditional business and e-business systems, cross-reference in Internet search engines, generation of creative insights, scientific discovery, marketing, e-learning systems, career counseling, etc.
Serendipity, defined as the ability to find interesting or valuable things just by chance, is acknowledged as one of the most effective catalysts in scientific, technological and artistic development, and is repeatedly associated with major turning points in science, technology and art, apart from its very impact in daily life. The phenomenon is typically described and easily recognized when someone is concerned with some problematic situation(s) and unexpectedly stumbles on a typically unrelated finding.
This unexpected, unsought finding is often important to solve the current problematic situation or for the resolution of a distinct and known problematic situation that is totally or partially unrelated to the one that was at hand when the serendipitous event occurred. These two phenomena are commonly defined as pseudo-serendipity, for the unexpected finding—the resolution of a known problematic situation—was already sought for.
Frequently, the serendipitous event presents the person with a new, unrelated, unexpected, unsought problematic situation, instead of the solution to a currently known problematic situation. Other times, the serendipitous event presents the person with an unknown, unexpected, unsought relationship between two or more seemingly unrelated pieces of information. These two phenomena define true serendipity: the chance discovery of an unsought finding.
Computer systems have always been concerned with processing information to support the tasks and information needs of the users. The value and usefulness of such systems is determined by the value and usefulness of the information they provide. This agrees with our second nature of valuing only what seems relevant for the situation at hand, and of discarding what is supposedly irrelevant. Avoiding cognitive overload has also been pointed out as an important reason for concentrating just on what is supposedly relevant. Yet, serendipity seems to express the opposite: most frequently, what is serendipitously found is totally or partially irrelevant for the current concerns, but offers an important contribution to another, unrelated situation.
One particular field of computer science, information retrieval, is specifically related to the essence of this invention. The main goal of current Information Retrieval Systems is to find what the user wants. This is what is usually needed. However, there is an alternative way of finding and using information that has been widely recognized by those skilled in the art. The alternative way concerns finding and acquiring unsought information in an accidental, incidental, or serendipitous manner.
Up to now, Information Retrieval Systems (hereafter “IRS”) have been unable to support serendipity, mostly due to their inner rationale and purpose. The main reason why serendipity has not been put at the service of serious scientific research and technological application is its apparent unmanageability: how (and why) could one provide someone with conspicuous, interesting, but unexpected and unsought information if the only ingredient of the process is chance? While information retrieval is about convergence toward the user's interests, through procedures that rely on accuracy and precision, serendipity is about divergence toward unknown, unexpected, unsought findings and stands at the limit of happenstance. IRS only move when they have a direction in which to move, whereas serendipity moves in order to generate direction.
Some attempts have been made to explore the concept of serendipity, namely in the field of information retrieval. One particular proposal is described in U.S. Published Application No. 20030093421, published May 15, 2003, entitled “Process and System for Matching Products and Markets”, which claims to provide a search method and system for matching a commodity to one or more applications for using the commodity. The process consists in expanding the user's search spectrum to regions of the information space beyond his or her obvious choices and mastered areas of knowledge, using pattern matching procedures over the properties of commodities and markets, and classification schemes. Although some unobvious findings may come out from this method and system, there is an undeniable deliberate intention to find something using the method or system (namely, a matching between some commodity and market(s)), which inexorably transforms the whole process, at most, into a pseudo-serendipitous process, even when the resulting matches could not be anticipated by the user. Additionally, the search method and system are fairly deterministic: given a specific commodity and its properties, a specific information space in which to search, a specific classification scheme to classify the retrieved data, it is quite possible to predict the potential outcomes of the system. Therefore, though uncovering unsought findings occasionally, the method and system reveal this rather dissimulated deterministic behavior, which neglects serendipity by discarding one of its most important ingredients: chance.
Another proposal is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,334,127, entitled “System, Method and Article of Manufacture for Making Serendipity-Weighted Recommendations to a User”, which claims to provide the user with serendipitous recommendations. The real benefits of such invention is the ability to remove the trivial and obvious recommendations (which are provided by typical recommender systems) from the user's sight by setting down the accuracy criteria to such a level that some unobvious items are suddenly pulled up in the prediction ranking. This invention misunderstands serendipity, confusing the concepts of serendipity and novelty. Even though finding new, interesting items, the user still finds what he or she was searching for, that is, something within the scope of his or her current concerns. This underlying characteristic is, in fact, revealed by the spirit and scope of the invention, which intends to provide items based on the user's preferences or interests, new items still liked by the user [sic]. This way, again, we have a system for providing pseudo-serendipitous recommendations, since its results cannot be considered as completely unsought.
As no existing technology is able to deliberately provide information in a serendipitous manner, the need exists for methods and systems capable of processing information for the purpose of fostering serendipity and pseudo-serendipity.